Jesse John
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 242
- Location
- Tucson, Arizona
Woah, amazing job! That liner and sweatband truly pop!! Felt looks nice and clean. Good work!!So here's the hat from post #429. I don't know if the earlier pictures really convey how dirty this hat was. Whoever owned this hat originally was a heavy sweater and wore this hat a lot. The sweatband had the extra vinyl (?) strip behind the sweatband and the liner had a plastic tip liner. There was still sweat stains on the ribbon and the top of the crown.
My first attempt at cleaning was with Dr. Bronner's castile soap. Not so effective (or maybe too diluted or I didn't soak it long enough) so I moved on to woolite which worked better, but the hat still has a bit of a patina. Blocked on my Randal Alan #52, the brim mostly kept its shape, as it is stiffer than the crown. I just evened out the wavyness a bit.
Now, I'm not usually grossed out by vintage hats but after cleaning the liner and hat body, I wasn't especially eager to use the original sweat....which as I mentioned in WHAYWT, is not really the original sweat, but a Shudde bros renovation sweat. I'm keeping that one for posterity or possibly trying that multi-step fat liquor process as it is starting to dry out and crack. But for now I put in a new sweat and sewed a new liner from some Japanese kimono silk. The ribbon tails are a bit uneven, as I think that also shrunk up a little bit during the woolite bath. I was trying to match the faded parts under the bow keep and it ended up a little longer on the back. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So not the most collector value on this one, and indeterminate age, but this felt still has a lot of life to wear about.